> She wasn't swiping much.
I have been through a couple of online dating and personality usually came first, so by the time appearance was revealed, we already could not care much. She was not my type, I was not her type, but that affected nothing.
The reason it did not work out is financial and logistics (different country, I have MS, I am heavily dependent on healthcare, and so forth), not because of any moral failing or what have you.
And so while we can't fix that, guys can certainly improve their chances of being in that 5%. The thing is, what a picture shows on an online dating profile really is a lot down to you, irrespective of your actual appearance.
But men have a horrible ability to select pictures that are either incredibly low effort and poor quality, or the type of pictures that men would find other men cool in, rather than what will attract women, before even considering how you compete on actual appearance. When I spent some time figuring out my profiles back in the day, my match rate went up by a large factor.
That 5% is static - individual guys can improve their chances of being in the 5%, but that pushes out others already in the 5%.
IOW, if women are only looking at the top 5% of men, there's very little you can do to make them look at the top 50% of men.
And that was exactly my point. You can punch far above your metaphorical weight very easily because most guys hardly tries.
> IOW, if women are only looking at the top 5% of men, there's very little you can do to make them look at the top 50% of men.
I didn't come even close to suggesting otherwise.
Like? I haven't tried online dating in a long time, but all guys I knew had normal profiles and rarely got any matches let alone dates.
>most guys hardly tries
That's irrelevant. Women on dating apps are still only going to interact with the top guys that are above their league, let's say a 9/10. Whether there's more who don't even try, doesn't help you at all. Like if you now try and you go from a 4/10 to a 6/10, you're still below the 9/10 throeshold the top guys have set the bar at. Women don';t choose on statistical distribution, thinking that there's only a handful of guys at the top so they'll have to lower the bar to find a mate, meaning you'll have a chance by going to a 6/10.
"Normal profiles" for men typically means hardly trying. It means poorly lit pictures. It means bad angles. Often it means things that instantly puts most of the women off, like shirtless pics [1], and poorly written profiles.
I've never had any problems getting matches and dates, but I did have to work for it. That meant ensuring I had good quality pictures, and ensuring my profile matched what women on the given site that I might want to date said the were looking for.
I went from rarely if every getting matches and dates to getting a steady stream of them not by magically getting better looking, but by improving my profile.
Just fixing the writing multiplied the number of dates I got by a decent factor.
> That's irrelevant. Women on dating apps are still only going to interact with the top guys that are above their league, let's say a 9/10. Whether there's more who don't even try, doesn't help you at all.
The point is that those "9/10"'s also mostly don't try (I'd argue most 9/10's aren't on the dating sites, so really you're competing against "dating site 9/10's" who are mostly going to be relatively regular guys who know how to pick a good photo)
[1] Shirtless pics works if you're built - it worked for me after I'd spent 10 years in the gym powerlifting, it did nothing before that - and are posting on a hookup focused site like Tinder, and have a profile written to focus on giving off that vibe. It does not work well on a more "serious" dating site even if you're seriously muscular. But still if you look at the guys profiles, you'll still see a steady stream of them. Most men going on dating sites really ought to take a look at the competition, and then do pretty much the opposite of what most guys are doing.
No, they had good pics. What then? When can we just admit short stature, ugly face, small, jawline, etc. are just not attractive to women on dating apps, and lighting conditions, angles and all that and everything is just cope.
Who had?
My experience from looking at how men presents themselves to gauge "the competition" back when I was single was that most guys have absolute garbage photos on dating profiles.
> When can we just admit short stature, ugly face, small, jawline, etc. are just not attractive to women on dating apps, and lighting conditions, angles and all that and everything is just cope.
You're never going to make the bottom 5% look like the top 5%, but you can certainly move yourself very significantly up. To take your examples, if you're short don't post pictures of yourself next to things that highlight how short you are. If your face is ugly, don't highlight it, and so on.
What is cope is to dismiss that your failure to get responses can't at least to a very significant degree be mitigated by presenting yourself better.
It's how guys decide to keep posting the utter shit pictures most men put on their dating profiles.
Seriously: Ask women to help you pick photos or for advice on how to do better. Worst case, hire a female photographer.
When everyone invests equally in getting to the top 5%, because of how competitive it is, then it results in people maintaining their same spots as before on the leaderboard.
Also you can't improve things like height which is one of the most important things women care about.
>there's very little you can do to make them look at the top 50% of men
Historically it's been solved using religion and families enforcing monogamy in society, like in the past 2000 years of human history, to ensure most men and women get to find a pair to make a family and giving them a relatively equal opportunity/stake in the future of society as an incentive to help maintain and defend it.
Without these traditional enforcement mechanisms, I guess we can explain them the math that if they wish to find happiness and not die alone surrounded by cats, then they can't all share the same top 5% of men, and so will need to settle for a realistic man in the same league as them, instead of waiting for gigachad because their biological hypergamy instincts tells them to.
Yes, but everyone isn't doing that. You'd think men would, but I suggest you ask around some women on their experience of the quality of mens dating dating profiles.
THe top % are. Which is the yardstick you're being judged on, even when you're not in the top %.
If every man groomed himself and presented just "good" portraits and captures in his dating profile pics, that 5% would probably improve.
I'm a hetero man, but I've formed a fake female profile just to investigate. Wow... my competition is 95% disappointing. My non-existent labia recoiled in dismay. "May or may not be an axe murderer." "Thinks sports fanwear is dressing to impress." "I just killed this animal! Date me!" "Dude, do you realize you are grimacing?"
Let me tell you, women are waiting with bated breath to hear you explain this to them.
Last I checked, most western societies don’t allow polygamy and most people still prefer monogamy. You don’t have to explain anything to anyone, women get it. They are just happier living by themselves than surrounded by dudes who make condescending remarks about them dying surrounded by cats. I guess maybe we can explain that to men.
Oh no, how will we ever deal without billions upon billions of abusers and molesters.
Have you tried touching grass or better yet, professional therapy to cope with your misandrist traumas?
I was raised as a classical cis male. I have spent most of my time in male-exclusive or male-majority circles.
I have yet to find a male with even a sliver of moral or ethical behavior. Behind closed doors, in a male-only environment, you discover the truth about males. There is not a single salvageable male.
"Aren't you a male, too?" Do you think I haven't tried to kill myself? It's surprisingly difficult. Besides, I'm trying to get as far away from masculinity as physically possible.
>"Aren't you a male, too?" Do you think I haven't tried to kill myself? It's surprisingly difficult.
Brother, you need help.
Are you saying women can't understand the basic arithmetic of demographics relationship pairing, on their own? That they don't understand they can't all realistically settle down with the top % of men, if they don't want to end up alone?
> They are just happier living by themselves
Says who? Polls and studies show a massive drop in womens' happiness since the 70s, along with a massive increase in use of alcohol, antidepressants and SSRIs, especially amongst childless women over the age of 40 in the present, because as it it turns out, human evolutionary biology engineered womens' bodies and brains to desire to have kids for a good reason(procreation of the species), and years/decades of feminist anti-natalist propaganda takes its biological toll on the mind eventually, no matter how hard the cope is that they're "happy alone". Is that what womens' "happiness alone" looks like to you, popping pills and getting drunk?
If you don't believe me then just Google it, ChatGPT it, Gemini it, etc. and see for yourself.
You can tell yourself and others whatever you want and what makes you feel better about yourself, but in the end, biology always wins, as it has for the past two thousand years of human existence and for the next two thousand years in the future, as people who are "happy alone" get selected out of the gene pool. Reproductive biology is the undefeated champion over everything else humans created.
No, that’s what you were saying and I was responding to that. I’m genuinely baffled at this response. Did you lose context? Do you really think I am saying that? Are you unfamiliar with sarcasm, or do you assume everyone being sarcastic always labels it with /s? Genuine question because I thought my meaning was pretty clear.
Similarly with the other point you quoted (out of context). Yes, women are happier living by themselves than with men who feel only contempt for women. The worst thing in life is not to end up alone, it’s not ending up selected out of the gene pool, the worst thing in life is to end up chained to a bad partner.
By the way I did chatGPT your claims and, unsurprisingly, they range in accuracy and substantiation. The claim about childless women over 40 being particularly unhappy is especially badly substantiated (particularly since it mixes those who are willingly childless with those who wanted children but couldn’t have them). In fact, older men who are childless seem to be unhappier than older women who are childless.
It’s interesting to see the narrative in men’s spaces about how dumb women are and how they’re going to end up dying alone surrounded by cats and how the men pushing this narrative don’t realize how supremely unattractive this makes them to women.
I don’t know if you’re capable of actually hearing this, but I will repeat it for you again. Talking about women like they’re idiots and expressing this kind of contempt towards them makes you supremely unattractive to women. And yes, they absolutely can tell that this is what you think, no matter how well you think you hide it in person. I hope that, if not today, then maybe a year from now or five years from now, you will sit with yourself and really consider that idea.
Why makes you think that? It seems much more likely to me that women are selecting whatever profiles that interest them, which would be >5% if potential matches made better profiles. I've seen the women experience of dating apps from women friends, and indeed men profile quality is abysmal (my bisexual and lesbian friends seem to swipe on a much higher proportion of women profiles FWIW), to the point that 5% even seems pretty high once you also take into account personal preferences.
6/10 would get a response and some, dates.
The apps make it so there's no conversation and it's all about your profile.
Way more difficult to get noticed.
But my point was that most men are doing such a shit job at presenting themselves on their profiles that it isn't that difficult to massively improve your odds by making a profile that is better than average.
Spending more than 5 minutes ensuring you have a profile picture that is decently lit, taken from an angle that present you well, and that you look like you're capable of taking care of yourself is a good start, but judging from conversations with a lot of women while I was dating, that is a high bar to clear for most guys on dating sites.
90% of the guys had a photo of them with their pickup truck, a pic of them drinking heavily, and a pic of them giving the middle finger.
Not in a particularly redneck or rural area either. Lowest effort possible.
It is still effort if you make a decent profile on places like Tinder, because Tinder is very much intentionally trying to frustrate you to make you pay, but even just having a female friend you could ask to help pick a photo that won't actively repel every woman that ever sees your profile ups your chances so much...
We ended up dating for 5 years after that after meeting this person.
I miss the old internet.
Men need an equivalent to political lesbianism.
Gay men have excellent marriage/partnersahip statistics. They stay together, they don't (or tolerate/accept) "cheating", very low physical abuse, very happy/satisfying relationships etc statistics.
Lesbian women have literally the opposite. The memes about domestic violence and other serious problems among lesbian communities would be funny if they weren't so true.
When I see these sad "women are from Venus, men from Mars" style of comments, all I can feel is that this is a sad truth of the universe.
The men who enjoy showing off pictures of their fishing/hunting haul. The men who use android phones, the men who want to show themselves topless (even in contexts where this makes sense). These man are not "low quality" or even "less desirable" partners in any objective sense because their photography choices are not amicable to women's desires. Women account for like 80% of consumer spending and advertising/marketing folks know some extremely uncomfortable truths about group-think/hive-mind mentality among women. These men should celebrate that they are showing their authentic selves, not the contorted version they have to repeatedly summon to satisfy foids.
Basically, men should actively be proud of our achievements, and any who can ignore societies intense biphobia should lean into the masculine side of their desires, as their relationship satisfaction will likely go significantly up.
What.
Have you ever met a gay male? Maybe even talked to him?
Gay males are still males at the end of the day so they always land themselves in the most damaging relationships possible. Males already cause tons of harm by themselves, so sum them together and you get a truly dreary mess.
There's a reason there are so many gay males who are so homophobic they make Evangelicals seem like a Pride Parade Organizing Committee.
I was like that. I simply managed to realize that the problem wasn't homosexuality, but rather that it's always been males.
Dating males in general is a form of self-harm if I'm being honest with you. I'm bisexual and I do still feel attracted to males but I am at a good enough spot that I don't want to hurt myself that way.
They are not objectively "low quality", but they are objectively less desirable to women if women find them less desirable for it.
You can enjoy leaning into those things all you want, but you are not owed anything from women. They have no obligation to look past how you present yourself. And so if how you present yourself reduces their interest in you, that is on you. If you're fine with that, then by all means go ahead.
For my part, it was a very small sacrifice to spend a couple of hours figuring out which parts of my personality women actually finds attractive, and how to signal that with my pictures and profile text.
You should try AFK dating sometime, it's even worse! Out of all the women I've met, only 0.00000001218% been interested enough to date and marry me, and I didn't even touch any of the apps! Brutal.
Sampling bias. How many did you ask?
Dating is brutal.
Online dating seems like it perhaps speed-runs that a bit, but I don’t think it dramatically changes the essence.
> Dating is brutal.
Women demonstrate incredibly different behaviour when "selecting mates" when comparing (1) familiar settings, like work, school, church/temple, friend/activity/hobby groups vs (2) unfamiliar settings, like bars, clubs, public places, and online dating. For (1), they find many more men attractive because they can evaluate them on more than looks. For (2), they can only evaluate on looks. If you ask women to rate strangers based only upon looks, they will rank only 20% as attractive. That is what makes online dating so awful for average men.
When young (average looking) guys tell me about their awful/non-existent dating lives at the office, I always recommend that they try approaching women in public more often. Ignore the shit you see on social media where the fake #MeToo women come on to put guys on full blast for approaching. Don't worry about them. They are awful people, and you don't want them. Yes, you will get rejected a lot (maybe 5-10% hit rate), but it is way better than online dating apps. You can approach in supermarkets, stores, cafes, festivals/concerts, gym, parks, etc. That way, plenty of other people are around, and she won't feel unsafe. And start by approaching ugos/low-mids. You only need to get their socials or chat app. Even if you have no serious interest in that woman, you can practice chatting with her. Once you build some confidence, approach average looking women. Eventually, you will find success. As long as you dress average/OK, groom (comb/style hair, etc.) and don't smell bad, they won't put you on full blast if she is not interested. She will politely decline, or give socials, but never reply to chats.
Please don't read this post as an attack on women. It is an attack on our current ecosystem of online dating apps.
What? Dating been brutal and unforgiving for as long as I've been alive, but I wouldn't say I'm old (between 30 - 40). it was definitely harsh before the apps and had the exact same "everyone wants to date beautiful people, no one wants to date ugly people" "problem" that exists today, not sure what makes you say it's any different than today.
> Please don't read this post as an attack on women
I don't read your comment as an "attack" on anything, women or dating apps. But things like "women can only evaluate based on looks in bars, clubs, public spaces, etc" is wildly out of touch with reality, and makes your comment rightly seem out of touch rather than an attack on anything at all.
then, you are entering a place with loud music - how else apart from looks are you judging to speak some words to?
You're telling men to use "conventionally" unattractive women as target practice, implying they will be more receptive to attention, presumably due to a general lack of it. Then your advice is to leave these women behind once you've gotten what you needed, and to then seek women more attractive to you.
This is a perverse way to approach people.
Just wait until you hear what women actually say amongst themselves, this dudes comments will sound like Sunday school talk.
> Just wait until you hear what women actually say amongst themselves
1. You assumed without asking that I was male. This indicates an inherent bias on how you perceive and interact with others.
2. You assume I have a nascent understanding of how women think and feel, compared to yourself, who must be an expert on women.
3. You group all women into a single monolithic group with shared motivation and behaviors. This is textbook prejudice and misogyny.
4. You claim that women are even more misandrist than men are misogynist, implying a justification for OP's and your own misogynistic perspective. In actuality, you're only further expressing the depths of your own misogynistic attitude towards women.
5. You claim to know what they say amongst themselves while implying I don't have the same knowledge; Are you a woman? Or do you have hidden cameras on women? How else could you have possibly ordained this forbidden knowledge?
5. My partner, a woman, does not think or act the way you described. She does not engage in overt misandry with her friends.
6. I have encountered plenty of extremely misogynistic and legitimately creepy/abusive attitudes towards women at "Sunday school" and while receiving religious education. Every one of the many dozens of churches I've been to have had extreme misogynistic undertones, and often brazen overtones. If you are trying to establish a basis for what isn't misogyny, you couldn't have picked a worse target.
7. "But I'm not the only one who does it" has never, ever, ever been an excuse for prejudice.
8. Dating "marketplace"? What are you even talking about? Apps? Websites? Dating in general? I am not conventionally attractive by modern society's standards, I'm overweight, and outspoken. I have not had issues finding or attracting women. Determining long-term compatibility is much more difficult, but a lack of vanity or a misogynistic outlook was never the problem.
My advice? Touch grass, ask a woman what she actually thinks, and listen. You clearly are not currently in a position to give others advice on women; you are in need of advice.
Males are so used to holding all the cards and having everyone do their bidding that women having self-agency and making decisions feel like emasculating humiliations and an attack on the bases of masculinity.
They won't listen because they know what's at stake.
Of course I know them. It's me! (joshing)
Don't take it as an attack on you, by the way. But we have to recognize one of the biggest roots of the problems facing the world today.
So for me, I understand and support the distinction you're making about how resistance to oppressive institutions is not hate or violence, "misandry isn't real" just doesn't tell enough of the story. The type of misandry I'm speaking of isn't systemic or institutional in the way misogyny is. It's much more pathological and individual. I haven't met many people like this and it is definitely an outlier, whereas misogyny in men is commonplace. Humans, of course. The spider dating scene is a whole different conversation.
I'm curious what in particular you meant by one of the biggest roots of the problem facing the world today. The patriarchy, or something else?
Patriarchy, to be sure. But I'm also rallying against the false conceptions many people have about the acts of males in patriarchy.
Put simply, there is no male who does not benefit from the patriarchy. What's more, masculinity itself is a toxic expression of itself. You'll find that naïve liberal humanists often speak about "positive masculinity", yet they either struggle to define it or define it through traits that have no reason to be male-exclusive. Masculinity and, thus, maleness itself is a poison on this world that has been choking it for as long as we've been alive.
Well, this is what I do. When I think about what it means to me personally to be a man, to be masculine, I think about the ideals I try to live by. They're all universal ideals; but I think myself and the rest of the male community are better off for embodying them.
I expect women to do this as well; I think the majority of positive feminine traits one might try to identify are traits that have no reason to be female-exclusive. I don't think either femininity or masculinity are inherently toxic. What I would call the dominating ideas of modern "masculinity" are mostly toxic.
But I'd ask of you to consider that many of us are trying to be positive examples to other men. I myself have isolated toxic traits within myself that were learned from the male community; I didn't have a dad or a present mom, my male guardian was extraordinarily abusive and patriarchal (Catholic deacon ex-boxer), and I grew up in a backwards, rural area. I'm still working on being the best version of my self.
Especially when you consider that for any change to be effected within the male community, the conversation takes place with respect to any notion of masculinity. You are not going to be able to sell to men as a whole the idea of shedding their gender identity. Believe me, I would love if the entire concept of gender identity disappeared tomorrow and we all just saw ourselves as people, free to express ourselves in whichever manners we choose, without constraints such as "maleness" or "female...ness". But, gender identity exists today, it is culturally inherent and the best way to effect change today is to discuss what masculinity should be. I'm glad that the traits that come to mind for me are not male-exclusive. I would be very sad if there really were such fundamental, irreconcilable differences between men and women.
Every time I go online I try to remind myself that the majority of comments are coming from bots. The men in my life don't talk this way.
And where is this sentiment that women will only look at the same 5% coming from? One woman's 5% is going to look very different from another woman's 5%. Go outside and don't interact with just women, but a variety of people and a variety of different couples to see what normal relationships look like.
It seems in these conversations that the main concern for men is attracting women, but going by the way they talk about them, it doesn't sound like they respect them as fellow human beings. Some of the concerns women have during dating are: are they safe to be around (read: am I walking into a situation where I am going to get raped), am I going to be called a slut or a whore if I do x y and z? (Am I going to be called a slut if I don't?) It's what the internet talks about, and what media and your family will constantly warn you to be on the alert for.
Do women also engage in superficial behavior? Sure. Yet, I don't fault them for it. Women have been subjected to centuries of socially reinforced mass commercial and government propaganda, just like men. We are living in an age of manufactured consent and commodified personality traits. Gillette leveraging womens' magazines to convince women and men that body hair on women is not sexy. I hate what this culture of propaganda has done to us as social beings.
And yet, as you've described, the difference in experience between men and women is chilling. From how they perceive the world when walking alone at night, how they have to be more careful when consuming intoxicants at parties (and are socially shamed for failing to do this even when men are given a pass for getting so plastered they shit themselves), have to be more considerate of their presentation, their words, etc. And what is sad is that when you try to bring these things up as a man, you're often met with suspicion that you are against the entire concept of manhood. Which on its own is quite telling about how men subconsciously perceive themselves on a collective level.
The conversation seems unbalanced to many men because the world we live in is unbalanced, but many just don't see that because they see benefit in the status quo.
I’m not seeing anything about attracting women, just the natural dynamics present in populations.
You’re the only one I see using ‘slut’, ‘white’, etc.
And talk about missing the point; You are either ignorant or deliberately manipulative to admonish someone for speaking plainly about women's experiences. Are you next going to tell the Black community they're no longer allowed to use the n-word?
I was speaking plainly about womens experiences, and was responding to the poster who was denying them. The poster who was shaming recognizing women as people who are not actually on pedestals.
what are you even talking about?
My objection to the original thread was the dehumanization of women (and men) using the words ugos, mids, "the best", and grooming (young) men to approach situations in a calculated manner and assigning value to people based on their looks. If they happen to get rejected by an ugo that they perceive as being of lower attractiveness, how is that going to make them feel?
I'm not a psychologist nor do I understand human behavior, but this entire wording makes me uneasy, and it is awful to see it being promoted in something as benign-seeming as a tech forum. Also see: hypergamy, "explain them the math" -> "share the same top 5% of men", "women actually say amongst themselves".
The entire point of me including that last paragraph was to share a little picture of the kinds of expectations/language women are thinking in (sounds like I failed?), hopefully humanize them, and may also add color to these "natural dynamics", on top of other factors than just pure number ratios.
Men having the ability to date 100 women isn't the same as women having the ability to date 100 men because the risk factor and thinking is different. And if you are coaching men to think in this sort of language, well... IDK. I'm just glad I don't need to date in this current climate.
I love my SO and he adds so much to my life, but if I hadn't found him, a life with a snuggly cat sounds just as lovely :). I hope people who are afraid of being alone after they see this-and-that scary number are able to see a future in which they can also just be content by themselves, if it comes to that.
You will be shocked, if you talk with men who are really able to analze their traits and talk openly about it, how SIMILAR and shared these are :-)
Men are quite simple on some layer. Especially this dating layer. Even if some claim not being part of these "mind & traits behaviour", nonetheless they mainly think the same.
You might be interested to know that "this is the way things are" is not a valid excuse for perpetuating learned prejudice. I in fact take issue with some of the collective behavior of both men and women. Shocking, right?
Men around the world are functioning the same way,esp. on some levels like dating. Like it or not :-)
Men are simply >simple<. You do not have to accept this, even if its statisticly true.
And upon this adds men-specific behaviour with huge costs to society,but thats not part here.
Once a girlfriend "invited" me to those conversation by giving some examples, so ..yeeessss. :-D
Going out and desensitising yourself to anxiety over approaching strangers by talking to people without the intent or expectation of it going anywhere is the less offensive version, and one that works, without any need to rank people by appearance to do it.
I dunno, this seems to be interpreting the comment in the worst way possible. Like, assuming bad faith.
The comment above suggested that guys approach less-attractive women until they "build some confidence". This is not about the woman's receptivity to attention, this is about the guy's confidence or lack thereof. It makes sense: when confidence is worse, the conversation is more awkward and stilted, and that awkwardness is more likely to reinforce the idea that talking to strangers is a waste of time.
The charitable interpretation would be this: that you practice talking to strangers in scenarios that feel safe. Gradually, work up towards your goal - making new friends, talking to people you want to date, etc.
As I pointed out in another comment, he could've just argued for approaching people without expectations and intending it to go anywhere and suggested that a way of doing that is to approach people you're not attracted to.
In other words, make it about your intent and preference rather than about ranking women by appearance.
The Red Pill movement is about social manipulation to sleep with as many women as possible or have an endless string of situationships. My advice aims to help them to learn to meet strangers... and maybe spark a romantic connection. It is exactly how I dated my younger days... long before dating apps (when it was less brutal).
I met my girlfriend at a coffeeshop. I was a regular and just actively friendly to everyone. Our first date felt more like a second because we already had multiple conversations.
Men have a much greater emphasis on physical attraction than women which is why women need a much higher level of physical attraction when only using that. But building community lets us show off our other qualities which women put a much greater emphasis on.
The PUA scene was about gamifying or exploiting dating - hacking how you go about it for your own gains (getting laid)
Approaching women in public with good intentions and to feel more comfortable talking to women is not PUA. It’s one of the suggested things to do, but I think intentions matter a lot.
After Neil Strauss "The Game" almost destroyed several of the early exploitative PUA companies, many of them survived by refocusing on "softer", more self-improvement focused material. You'd find "old school" PUA companies like Real Social Dynamic[1] suddenly pushing exercise, meditation, and other self-improvement focused programs alongside their old routine-based pickup bullshit.
The comment above fits into that era, I think - on one hand there's language that fit right into some of that eras PUA mindset, on the other hand it's mostly arguing for the "softer" self-improvement stuff.
I agree with you that the intentions matter a lot, though. But I think the comment above would've gone down a lot better if worded differently...
[1] RSD later totally imploded after a campaign targeting one of their trainers - Julien Blanc, who pushed the exploitative angle to dizzying new heights.
The crazy thing is RSD has resurfaced since I wrote that comment and they don't seem to have learned a thing since their last implosion (I was on their mailing list briefly around 15 years ago, until I realised how creepy a lot of their material was, and clearly I didn't manage to get off it, as I got an e-mail about their relaunch)
I'd recommend picking up Neil Strauss' "The Game" - it gives a first hand account of how Strauss embedded himself in that scene in general and RSD in particular, and it's bizarre. Strauss' actually started his own PUA business after the success of that book.
I'd also recommend "Nine Ball: Confessions of an Angst-Ridden Maniac Who Decided to Get Laid or Die Trying" by Jeff Allen. Jeff Allen was one of the RSD coaches that was described in The Game, so it's very much biased. But if you take it as the slightly self-delusional autobiography it is, it's quite fascinating.
Don't like redpill? Make it stop working.
Redpill is ‘working’ as it always has, as an obvious red flag
https://theweek.com/culture-life/the-gender-education-gap-is...
https://www.the-independent.com/us/money/dating-struggles-wo...
https://edworkingpapers.com/sites/default/files/ai25-1199.pd...
https://mindingthecampus.org/2025/10/23/college-students-in-...
I think whatever website you’re getting this jargon from is hurting you
This is reality they're talking about, outside of work and home. Your inability to accept this doesn't make these trends any less observable.
It's not evenly distributed, for sure, but the stats say that almost every women get 1 or more interested men, while only about 5% of men get 1 or more interested women.
Seems to track that way in RL too, not just online dating, so yeah, I agree that online dating tends to speedrun to the conclusion.
It’s whiplash for a lot of guys, and that’s if you’re even savvy enough to clock it.
I don’t think it needs to be any more of a brutal realization than say the existence of say Santa, and yet here we are.
We need to do better about teaching our kids.